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EVART – Two local veterans, Jim Rohen and David Bricked, of VFW Post 7979 in Evart, worked to secure a Korean War Veterans Memorial placed at Guyton Park in Evart.
“Last year Korean War veteran George Becker spoke about it at a meeting,†Rohen said. “We looked around and said, ‘I think we need it,’ and we started to work on it.”
Rohen said the Guyton Park property belonged to the city, that they needed to get approval from city council to proceed with the plans.
“I contacted the city and made them an offer of what we wanted to do,” he said. “They were okay with the proposal, so we go with it.”
The memorial will consist of an Italian black marble monument 80 feet high by 36 inches wide and 8 inches thick, with a draped American flag engraved inside, as well as a depiction of the Korean Peninsula.
The proposed wording on the monument will say: “Dedicated to all veterans who served in Korea.”
“We commissioned the monument from Corey Funeral Home,†Rohen said. “It is made of black marble, and there is no black marble available in the United States, so we hope to have it by April of next year.”
The memorial will be placed on a concrete slab deep enough to protect it from the freeze-thaw cycle.
“The foundation has to descend several feet to support the weight of the monument, and under the foundation is a fairly heavy platform,†Rohen said. “We want this to last a long time.
Rohen and Bricked told City Council they hope the city will help create a brick walkway leading to the monument that matches Guyton Park’s current brick walks.
“We now have bricks in the walkway and we want to match them,†Rohen said. “Coming out of Main Street, there is a walkway that leads to the main WWII monument in the park. Halfway between the sidewalk and this monument, this is where we propose to place the new monument. I told them we would do the catwalk like the rest of the catwalks there. “
The inauguration of the monument is tentatively scheduled for Memorial Day 2022.
The project is funded in large part by a generous donation from the family of George Becker. With that, they have all the funding they need to complete it, Rohen said.
“A lot of it is donated,†he said. “Mark Corey orders the monument and all for nothing, and the guy who does the cement work volunteers for all the cement work.”
However, he added that while they aren’t soliciting donations at this time, the Post is ready to take anything anyone wants to give.
Guyton Park is dedicated to the memory of Joseph Guyton, the first American to be killed on German soil in WWI. It includes a commemorative plaque dedicated to Guyton and a monument to those who died in World War II and the Vietnam War.
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